Savings interest rates still "break the barrier"

Although the State Bank has set the maximum savings interest rate at no more than 14% per year, including promotions, some banks still secretly mobilize deposits higher than the allowed ceiling, in many forms.

An employee of An Binh Bank (ABBank) has just sent an advertising message inviting customers to deposit VND savings with an interest rate of 16%/year. According to this employee, the interest rate for 1-3 month terms is 16%/year for deposits of 500 million VND or more.

In addition, depending on the amount of deposit, customers have the right to negotiate interest rates with the bank. At the same time, the highest interest rate announced by ABBank is only 14%/year.

Interest rates are high. Illustrative photo.

It is known that the deposit interest rates announced by banks currently fluctuate from 10 - 14%/year. However, in order to mobilize as much as possible, banks have "broken the barrier" with interest rates up to 16%/year.

In addition, with promotional tricks of giving interest and gifts, the real interest rates of banks also exceed the allowed ceiling. From March 1 to 31, Agribank organized to mobilize savings with prepaid interest in VND and USD for individual customers who deposit for 12 months or more, with attractive interest rates and valuable gifts such as Vespa LX motorbike equivalent to 6,000 USD, Plasma TV equivalent to 3,000 USD.

Increasing deposit interest rates will affect the output interest rates of banks, which are high and beyond the tolerance of businesses and people. Currently, the interest rates that businesses have to bear have reached 19-22%/year, while consumer interest rates in some places have reached 22-25%/year.

Besides VND, USD interest rates have also been adjusted to increase quite strongly by banks. Long-term interest rates at ABBank are currently at 5.7%/year, which is also the highest rate at banks. Other terms range from 4.1%/year to 5.25%/year.

According to Dr. Le Xuan Nghia, member of the National Monetary Policy Advisory Council, to cool down the exchange rate market at this time, the first thing to do is to immediately reduce foreign currency deposit interest rates. Therefore, it is necessary to sharply increase the required reserve (RE) for foreign currency deposits from the current 3% to 10% for commercial banks.

If the DTBB ratio is high, banks are forced to mobilize low interest rates and lend high to compensate for the DTBB. At that time, people with USD will compare savings between VND with interest rates up to 14%, while foreign currency is only 2-3%, and decide to sell USD to deposit VND. The USD supply for the market will also increase from there.

According to Dat Viet